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The BeeBEC lab has a culture of mutual respect, transparency and kindness. We do great science, but life comes first! The following list outlines our commitment to protecting our lab culture and identity. All lab members (2024-2025) have contributed to this list, and we revisit and update our approach annually.

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Lab culture

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 1) Commitment to transparency, and communication. Science should be fun, but at times it can be stressful. Clear communication about team member expectations and project goals is important and occurs at the start of all on-going projects.

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2) Prioritising-work life balance. Team members are free to set their own working schedule. We strongly believe that a healthy work-life balance will not only mean team members are happy, but also more productive in the long-term.

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3) Culture of collaboration. Collaboration within and between other groups at the University of Bristol (and beyond) is strongly encouraged. Team members roles are predefined within each collaboration (see point 1).

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4) Time for weekly lab meetings, and one-to-one meetings between the PI and all lab members are safeguarded. In our weekly lab meetings, we regularly run workshops where we develop key skills for future employment (e.g. CV workshop, stats sessions, academic writing).

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5)  ECR’s always come first! While the Research Aims of the group are to produce high-impact science (see below for details) the needs and goals of ECR’s always come first. Sometimes, for career or personal reasons, the aims of the PI and other lab members may not be aligned. In these rare cases, we will always make the decisions that is best for the ECR.

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6) EDI commitment. The lab is committed to widening scientific participation. We attempt to do this through our outreach objectives (see below), and the PI also takes this into consideration when recruiting for the group.  

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7) Lab events. Each term the lab will have at least one lab away day. These are fun, non-work events that will help foster teamwork, friendship, and ultimately collaboration.  

 

Research and outreach objectives

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1)  We aim to produce high quality, thorough research that transcends our discipline, and the echo chambers of academia. One well thought out manuscript that pushes the field forward is more useful than several smaller papers with obvious data gaps (but see section 5 for exceptional circumstances, above).

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2) As a research group we a committed to outreach. Outreach is a fun, rewarding process that benefits us and the wider community. As well as engaging in discipline specific outreach (with NGOs and charities), we also attempt to reach groups currently underrepresented in science, in an effort to widen scientific participation.​​​​​

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